


Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday

by Naamah_Beherit



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:32:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8605654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naamah_Beherit/pseuds/Naamah_Beherit
Summary: When the end is nigh, there is only one thing to do - accept decisions that have led to it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Drogi wiodące do dna](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8263301) by [Naamah_Beherit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naamah_Beherit/pseuds/Naamah_Beherit). 



> This is a translation of a story which was written as a gift for oEllenao. She requested something unspecified about the Witch-king's dilemmas during his duel with Éowyn, and this is the result. 
> 
> The title for this version has been borrowed from a song by Nevermore and the dialogue during the duel is a quotation from _The Return of the King_.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Inside black decision concealing what no one knows but I  
To regain the vision that my freewill once cast aside  
Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday  
The sweet downhill sadness of our slow decay  
  
Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday  
And I see the fault of the steps that I mislaid.”

 

Nevermore _Tomorrow Turned Into Yesterday_

 

* * *

 

 

He used to measure the passage of time with his own breathing.

The inhale had meant a beginning; a moment which had stretched in time to resemble eternity woven from threads of his thoughts, and which had dissolved into nothingness if he so desired. The exhale had been a change; an everlasting discovery always happening anew, a moment to make a decision  in order not to have it made in his stead. His breathing had been something that allowed him to sort his own thoughts, to find a meaning in situations seemingly without it. He had not accepted the lack of sense and purpose, and chaos was something he had not comprehended – and that was a point of view which both he and his master understood best.

The Ringwraiths did not breathe. Thus in time he had learnt to listen to that unique rhythm of his master’s fiery  spirit, that one of a kind song of fire which had already been old before the world came into being. The fire had become his heart and pulse to which circulated a memory of blood – nothing but fathoms conjured by his mind in order to save himself from the insanity of the existence with no body and no end. The eternity was a monster lurking in the dark and he was unable to face it.

Sometimes he wonder how it was possible for Khamûl to dream of immortality.

 

* * *

 

He has _his_ eyes, grey and full of emotions he used to feel but understands no more. He remembers them like a book once read or a history heard long ago, something he seemingly has never experienced himself. For years innumerable, the only thing he truly feels has been the fire consuming his soul.

“Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!” demands the lonely knight in a voice just as defiant as his posture. “Leave the dead in peace!”

But will the dead ever leave _him_ in peace?

 

* * *

 

He barely remembered the life he had once led – the life of a trusted and respected Númenórean general. He remembered he had had a wife and a son, and his life had brought him satisfaction born from an effortless success. He remembered the smell of her hair and the taste of her lips, the melody of her laugh and her queenly stubbornness. He remembered his eyes, grey and sparkly with joy, and his warm hand reaching out to him with the trust of a child believing that the presence of his father would help to overcome every obstacle the world could possibly put on his path.

And a day had come when one of those obstacle turned out to be too difficult to conquer, and he remembered that at the sight of a funeral pyre he had thought of his hatred for the fire.

She said she cursed the day she had agreed to join him in his journey to the mainland that had taken her child’s life. Powerless inertia stopped him from objecting, just like later it prevented him from reaching out to her when she had boarded the ship to carry her away from him. He woke up the following day to an empty world and a deafening silence of dead hopes and unfulfilled dreams.

Then he met Tar-Mairon.

“You have no right to that title!” he accused the other man once the alcohol had taken his common sense and given him the courage instead. “You are no king!”

“But I am,” Tar-Mairon said to that, and sparks of amusement were shining in his eldritch golden eyes. “I am a sole ruler of the biggest kingdom in Arda.”

“Are you, now? And what kingdom that might be which no one has ever heard about?”

“The hearts and minds of all beings that walk upon this world.”

He burst out laughing, and Tar-Mairon was watching him with interest befitting someone who just found something previously unknown. A soft smile of satisfaction graced his lips as if his words were a secret known only to few.

“You see, Tar-Mairon, or whatever your name truly is,” he began when his laughter had ceased; his voice bitter and full of disappointment at the fact that things were no longer going according to his will, “I think you are simply trying to find a place for yourself in a world where there is none.”

The look of those golden eyes which were focused on him with unbearable intensity changed from amused to serious within a second, and something dangerous flashed in them, something hidden almost instantly, something... _ancient_ , he realised. With a pang of irrational uneasiness, he thought he was playing with fire.

“We shall see then if you manage to forget about me,” said Tar-Mairon and something in his voice sounded like ashes settling upon a scorched earth.

He laughed at that in a pitiful attempt at masking his anxiety. And in the end it turned out Tar-Mairon had been right all along.

He never forgot.

 

* * *

 

The knight in front of him is a puzzle beyond his comprehension. That mere youngling in a helmet far too big for him should have already fallen to his knees, defeated by terror destined to shatter his resolve and leave his soul naked and defenceless. And yet he is standing still by the side of the fallen old man as if that person meant more to him than his own life.

He knows the overwhelming terror and the emptiness of lost hopes. Pride and stubbornness means naught to him – they are nothing but words echoing in the wind, meaningless terms slipping through a desperate grasp of his soul. He is but a memory of the man he used to be, and a broken shell of his self is held together only by a gold ring encrusted with a single ruby.

The Ring is now a part of him just like his body used to be.

“Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey!” he says to the knight. “Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”

Sometimes he thinks the darkness is all he knows now.

 

* * *

 

“Rumour has it you wield magic no mortal will understand,” he told Tar-Mairon when he met him many years later. The other man seemed completely untouched by time which usually devoured everything in its path; his hair was still fiery red, and his eyes gold and ageless.

He had been listening to rumours whispered in hushed voices which always ceased when dusk had fallen. They were insane and terrifying, and yet strangely appealing in that particular way which was similar to all things unknown. Tar-Mairon was a mystery he could not understand without all its missing pieces.

And mysteries had always been oddly alluring to him.

“That is true indeed,” Tar-Mairon agreed with a soft smile on his lips. His voice was sweet and irresistible like honey. “Men simply cannot comprehend aspects of reality which are against your nature.”

“You are speaking about constraints which I do not acknowledge. Songs of power cannot be constrained.”

His companion cast a quick glance to the side as if about to share an input or observation with someone, and it seemed to be a habit too old to be subjected to conscious control. And yet that person was no longer by his side and for a moment his features twisted in a grimace of frustration and overwhelming longing. Then the moment was gone and his face was unreadable once again.

“Bold words for someone whose lifespan is too short to be able to sing so much as a single note in the great song of Arda.”

“Bold words for a homeless tramp,” he retorted and regretted his words as soon as he spoke them.

There was a column of blinding fire where Tar-Mairon stood mere seconds ago, wild and unstoppable like a force of nature itself. The fire reached towards him, but it was darkness which furled between and beneath the flames that filled him with terror he had never felt before.

“Have you not realised whom you are speaking to?” was asked directly in his mind in a voice that could shatter the world. He did not know the language but understood it nonetheless, as if being spoken to in it inadvertently changed the very nature of his being. “You foolish mortal, I am Mairon the Admirable who had sung in the first Music before the birth of this world. I am Gorthaur the Cruel, the lieutenant of Melkor Who Arises In Might, the master of Angband and Tol-in-Gaurhoth, and the lord of Mordor.”

“Sauron,” he whispered when the last piece of the puzzle found its place and the mystery turned out to be a trap.

 

* * *

 

It is almost like a dance, the way the grey-eyed knight reacts to his every move while the world seems to contract around them to consist only of that small area on the battlefield which takes form of what had been sung about in the Music greatest of them all. And when the reality has become this one moment which was the eternity itself for both of them, the knight defiantly looks him almost in the eyes.

“Do what you will,” he shouted in a daring voice, “but I will hinder it, if I may.”

Annoyance has flared up in place of weariness he usually feels. Lo and behold! for it is he, the king of Angmar and Minas Morgul who is exchanging meaningless insults with a boy who was deemed old enough to carry a sword only because the war had come. It is he who was the first to greet his master upon his return to Mordor after the cataclysm which had changed the world, and only because of that he witnessed the Maia discarding his old name and accepting himself as Sauron. It is he who notices the absence of something or someone unknown to him that is stuck like a thorn in his master’s mind and is leading him towards the abyss of madness.

It is he who is now squabbling over a king’s corpse like a vulture.

“Hinder me?” he repeats mockingly and allows his annoyance to permeate his words. “Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”

There are days when he wishes he were wrong in that regard.

 

* * *

 

Khamûl was pacing to and fro along the corridor, his frustration ever present and almost material in its power.

“That pathetic creature!” the Nazgûl yelled all of a sudden which sent a random orc running in the opposite direction. “How can it even—“

“Apparently it can,” he interrupted. “Do not blame... _it_ for your own failure.”

That earned him a stream of curses in a language forgotten for centuries, but he did not care. He knew Khamûl for far too long to care.

“Instead of gracing me with your whining, you should personally inform about your failure. And you know it.”

“You are his right hand,” the other Nazgûl’s voice was dripping with mockery. “I shall think it is your responsibility to deliver such messages.”

Every possible answer he considered was blown out of his mind when he felt the scorching fire behind his back.

“What messages?”

Sauron was looking at them with eyes which betrayed absolutely nothing. Only those eyes were still the same, flaming and timeless as they always had been, but everything else... There was no more fiery red hair that had once fallen down his back like waves of living flames, and gone was a face which had put to shame likenesses of kings. The blinding fire was no more and only the shadow was left, barely lit by dying flames.

Changes were eating the world away and Sauron alongside it.

“Our...guest has turned out to be rather resilient to our interrogation techniques,” he explained and bowed deeply. He hoped his master was in a good mood, because the alternative was _not_ something he dared to consider.

“It means you are not asking the right questions,” the Maia announced and sighed deeply. “Must I always do everything myself?”

He did not ordered them to join him, but the effects of his work could be heard in the entire tower.

“He is getting worse, don’t you think?” Khamûl asked quietly, his voice fit for someone who craved to be on the other side of Arda at that moment. “I wonder what makes him so unpredictable these days.”

He recalled grey eyes and said nothing, because for one, terrifying moment he realised he could not recall whose eyes those had been. He were unable to think of anything else but darkness and fire consuming the world, leaving nothing but ashes in its wake.

“Loss,” he finally answered, because it was a term he thought he understood best.

When he sometimes noticed glimpses of emptiness and longing in his master’s eyes, he remembered his own grief and thought that perhaps certain emotions could be experienced by everyone.

 

* * *

 

The grey-eyed knight is laughing like a madman, almost as if this impasse which has bound them and locked together in one, never-ending moment is a joke. Or maybe the madness has already taken reign over entire Arda.

“But no living man am I!” cries his opponent and takes off his helmet. Bright tresses fall down his – _her_ , he corrects himself despite his astonishment, _this is a woman_ – back shining like a midday sun, white and blinding. “You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.”

He remembers the prophecy of an elf whose gold _fëa_ set aflame his eyes and soul; he remembers how he laughed at the condition which then seemed to be impossible. Is it possible that Eru Ilúvatar has decided to mock him to _this_ extent?

A small, mute and forgotten part of him is elated and he is not going to even consider why, so he straightens his back instead and defiantly looks the world in the eye with only one thought resounding in his mind:

 _I do not acknowledge it_.

He does not acknowledge prophecies that determine his future, and fate which tore what he had loved most from him and later threw shards of his dreams at his feet. He does not acknowledge one, true path and expectations he has never lived up to. And even though he is tired of darkness and embers within it, he pulls them close to his heart up till the embers ignite and warm him, and he wraps the flames around himself like a cloak and challenges the fate itself.

He fights for the future his son had been denied. He fights for himself and his own decisions which have led him to this point, and even though the results are catastrophic, he does not regret them – for they are _his_. And lastly, he fights to survive, because even though his body has been long but dead, the will to live is not that easy to extinguish.

He fights because he can. And that is enough.

And when he realises this is the last duel he will ever fight, he suddenly knows that even if he won it, he had already lost. Magic is all that holds him together and its sunset is already approaching. The world is changing rapidly, songs of power diminish and disappear and so do all beings to which they are like the air itself. A new age is coming and brings with it a world in which there is no place for him, for the Istari, and for Sauron most of all, and perhaps that is why there will be no winning side in this war.

He looks into the grey eyes and imagines his son, grown up and proud; imagines that he has been given a future in a place where Men’s souls are taken to after death. Then he feels a prick – almost painless, as if a bite of an insect he has failed to chase away in time. And then there is nothing but darkness and searing cold, and for a moment he thinks he has finally been freed from the torment of the fire.

And then there is nothing at all.


End file.
